US agency finds Iraq projects ineffective: NYTimes

New York, Apr 29: Inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that seven of eight reconstruction projects in Iraq that the United States had declared successes were no longer operating as designed, The New York Times reported in today editions.

The causes are either due to plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting or expensive equipment lying idle, the newspaper said.

The findings marked the first time inspectors have found projects ranging from a maternity hospital to Iraqi special forces barracks or an airport power station once officially declared a success, to be no longer working properly as few as six months after the declaration, the Times said.

At the airport, for example, inspectors found that nearly 12 million dollars had been spent on new generators, of which 8.6 million dollars worth were no longer functioning.

In another case, a sophisticated system for distributing oxygen throughout an Erbil hospital was ignored by medical staff members who told inspectors that they distrusted the new equipment and were still using oxygen tanks, which were stored unsafely.

Officials at the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said the sampled projects, which cost about 150 million dollar, could not be viewed as a statistical measure of U.S.

rebuilding in Iraq, but did raise serious concerns about the effort.

''These first inspections indicate that the concerns that we and others have had about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid,'' Stuart Bowen Jr., who leads the office of the special inspector general, was quoted as saying.

The findings will be summarized in a quarterly report by Bowen's office tomorrow. Bowen also told the newspaper he had ordered inspectors to broaden their efforts to return to re-examine projects more than six months after their completion.

Besides the airport, hospital and special forces barracks, places where inspectors found serious problems included two projects at a military base near Nasiriya and one at a military recruiting center in Hilla, and a police station in Mosul, the Times said.

Most of the problems cited in the report seemed unrelated to sabotage, and were instead the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of maintenance and simple neglect, the newspaper said.

The bureau within the US Embassy in Baghdad that oversees reconstruction in Iraq dismissed the findings and disagreed with all of the inspector general's recommendations, including those suggesting that the United States should lend advice on waste disposal and even floor maintenance.

''Recommendations such as how much water to use in cleaning floors or disposal of medical waste could be deemed as an intrusion on, or attempt to micromanage operations of an Iraqi entity that we have no controlling interest over,'' wrote William Lynch, acting director of the embassy bureau, called the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, the Times reported.

Reuters>